Perfectionism

As I was commenting on another person's blog I thought about something that I wanted to write about on here. Growing up I was a perfectionist. If I did something it had to be done right. Schoolwork and painting were some of the few things I really took seriously. This perfectionistic attitude still lingers although I have become more lenient to keep my sanity. My confession is that I have such a hard time watching M&M doing a craft or coloring and especially painting. I have to physically keep my hands behind my back so that I don't interfere with her learning process. We still clash with this sometimes because I don't want a big mess in my house, although my house is always messy anyway. *sigh*

When M&M tries to do something and she is unsuccessful she gets very frustrated and wants to quit. I can see myself in her; if I can't do something right then don't do it at all. I'm trying to teach her that she just needs to keep trying and she will eventually do it. As I've introduced the potty to her she has gotten frustrated that she can't do it every time she sits down on it. I can sense that she might have some perfectionism in her personality, I only hope that I can help her see that everything doesn't have to be perfect earlier in life then when I figured it out.

By the way, I am cracking down on potty training on Monday. I'll finally have a slow and relaxed week so that we can buckle down at home to get this thing done. She's been doing great actually and has even told us she needs to go a few times and will run to the bathroom. Her problem is that she doesn't want to stop what she's doing to go to the bathroom. I'll update about this later on when we have some progress to report.

For those of you who read this post I want to report that I have Bubba totally weaned. I just decided to do it cold turkey. He took it like a champ because he is so easy-going. There was a lot of pain on my part, but that is over now. I know that breastmilk is best for babies, but for the sake of my health at this time I needed to wean him.

Also, M&M went to her first day of "school" as she calls it. I call it FREEDOM! Although the technical term would be "Mother's Day Out" program. It was so wonderful to just have a few hours to get some stuff done at home that I usually can't do during the day with M&M around or at least I got it done a lot faster than I could have. She had a great time and the teacher said she was fabulous. When I dropped her off I stayed in the room for a few minutes, but then I gave her a hug and kiss and said I'm going now and she said okay. I'm excited for her to have this experience because she wants to be like her older cousins so bad. When we got home she wanted to do "mommy's school" as well. Her little Dora backpack is her constant companion now and it is always filled with all sorts of things that M&M thinks she will need for school.